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US Intelligence on the Imperial Japanese Army After the Fall of the Philippines, Winter 1942 to Spring 1943 Ford, D

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US Intelligence on the Imperial Japanese Army After the Fall of the Philippines, Winter 1942 to Spring 1943 Ford, D Dismantling the ‘Lesser Men’ and ‘Supermen’ myths: US intelligence on the imperial Japanese army after the fall of the Philippines, winter 1942 to spring 1943 Ford, D http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/02684520903069496 Title Dismantling the ‘Lesser Men’ and ‘Supermen’ myths: US intelligence on the imperial Japanese army after the fall of the Philippines, winter 1942 to spring 1943 Authors Ford, D Type Article URL This version is available at: http://usir.salford.ac.uk/id/eprint/19102/ Published Date 2009 USIR is a digital collection of the research output of the University of Salford. Where copyright permits, full text material held in the repository is made freely available online and can be read, downloaded and copied for non-commercial private study or research purposes. Please check the manuscript for any further copyright restrictions. For more information, including our policy and submission procedure, please contact the Repository Team at: [email protected]. Dismantling the ‘Lesser Men’ and ‘Supermen’ Myths: US Intelligence on the Imperial Japanese Army after the fall of the Philippines, winter 1942 to spring 1943 During the opening stages of the Pacific War, between December 1941 and spring 1942, the Imperial Japanese Army (IJA) appeared unstoppable. US forces in the Philippines, despite their efforts, could not hold out against the enemy advance, and by April, the last vestiges of their resistance at Bataan and Corregidor became untenable. The intelligence obtained during the initial encounters provided the US defense establishment with undeniable reasons to conclude that Japanese ground forces possessed a high level of tactical skill, and assessments of the IJA tended to exaggerate the latter’s capabilities. By the start of 1943, when the Allies had achieved their first victories in the Pacific theaters, and their counter-offensive started to gather momentum, the Americans developed a more optimistic view. Encounters at Guadalcanal and New Guinea proved that the IJA could be defeated, given adequate resources and their methods of use. Nevertheless, in defensive operations, enemy forces proved their skill at inflicting delay and casualties. The Japanese also demonstrated a propensity to fight to the last man and round. US intelligence therefore continued to portray the IJA as an opponent whose martial qualities were not to be downplayed. For the US Army and Marine Corps, the opening phases of the Pacific War taught them a number of valuable lessons. Military personnel were introduced to the challenges they were to cope with in their campaigns against the Japanese, and were also able to identify some of the ways to conduct successful operations against the IJA. Due attention was paid to the fact that the Allies were fighting an unfamiliar opponent, in battlefield conditions they were not yet accustomed to. The development of appropriate methods against the Japanese hinged upon US forces gaining adequate combat experience. Historiography The existing works on US military operations during the opening stages of the Pacific War provide a detailed account of the way in which the battles unfolded. The official 1 histories of the campaigns in the Philippines, Solomon islands and New Guinea have put forward some useful details of how the army and marine corps dealt with the challenges they faced.1 A number of unofficial publications have also illustrated the various lessons which were learned from the initial engagements with the IJA. 2 Nevertheless, the evolution of intelligence assessments of Japanese combat capabilities remains largely unexplored. A number of works have covered US views of the Japanese prior to Pearl Harbor, but they have not explored the way in which opinions of the IJA changed after the outbreak of hostilities.3 The scholarship on US army intelligence during the Pacific War has focused on the efforts to decode the IJA’s communications. 4 In regard to American attitudes towards the Japanese, John Dower’s seminal monograph illustrated how racial animosity acted as a key influence.5 Nevertheless, Dower tends to provide a one-sided account that focuses on public perceptions, and is not clear on the views held by military officials. The following analysis attempts to fill the gap by determining how American views of the IJA developed during the first year following the loss of the Philippines. It examines the nature of the intelligence that was available to the US defense establishment, its methods of scrutinizing the intelligence, and the problems involved in propagating a more calibrated assessment to personnel in the battlefield. Last but not least, one needs to explain how intelligence influenced the development of American tactical doctrine for ground operations. 1 L. Morton, The Fall of the Philippines, J. Miller, Guadalcanal: the first offensive, and S. Milner, Victory in Papua, in series The US Army in World War II: The War in the Pacific (Washington, DC: Historical Division, Department of the Army, 1949-57) 2 E. Bergerud, Touched With Fire: the land war in the South Pacific (NY: Penguin, 1996); R.B. Frank, Guadalcanal: the definitive account of the landmark battle (NY: Penguin, 1990); L. Mayo, Bloody Buna: the campaign that halted the Japanese invasion of Australia (Garden City, NY: Doubleday & Co., 1947) 3 C.L. Christman, ‘Franklin D. Roosevelt and the Craft of Strategic Assessment’, W. Murray and A.R. Millett (eds), Calculations, Net Assessment and the Coming of World War II (NY: Free Press, 1992), pp.216-57; D. Kahn, ‘US Views of Germany and Japan before World War II’, E. May (ed.), Knowing One’s Enemies: intelligence assessment before the two world wars (Princeton, NJ: Princeton UP, 1984), pp.476-501; also see B. Bidwell, The History of the Military Intelligence Division, Department of the Army General Staff, 1775-1941 (Frederick, MD: University Publications of America, 1986) 4 E. Drea, MacArthur’s ULTRA: codebreaking and the war against Japan, 1942-1945 (Lawrence, KA: Kansas UP, 1992); R. Lewin, The Other ULTRA: codes, cyphers and the defeat of Japan (London: Hutchinson, 1982) 5 J. Dower, War Without Mercy: race and power in the Pacific War (NY: Pantheon, 1986) 2 Japanese military effectiveness during the interwar years and early stages of the Pacific War: a worthy match? One of the main reasons why US military staffs faced difficulties in assessing the IJA was that its tactical methods and weapons technology demonstrated an uneasy blend of proficiency and backwardness. Even among historians, the Japanese army’s performance has attracted both criticism and praise.6 On one hand, the IJA’s approach to combat was largely focused on the use of the infantry arm, and did not pay a great deal of attention to the importance of employing modern armaments. The idea was based on the experiences of the 1904-05 Russo-Japanese war.7 Efforts towards reform were hindered by a number of material and doctrinal factors. During the interwar years, officers studied British, French and German operations during the 1914-18 conflict, and began to explore ways to integrate heavy weaponry such as tanks, artillery and aircraft to their force structures.8 However, Japanese industries could not produce large quantities of equipment, and the IJA faced a perpetual problem in procuring an adequate supply. The material shortcomings were compounded by Japanese doctrine, which was based on the principle that foot soldiers, when properly led and motivated, could overcome whatever technological or numerical advantages their opponents held.9 Japan’s military culture also stifled initiative, and created a mindset which hindered improvements. Army commanders were imbued with an institutionalized taboo which discouraged them from suggesting that Japanese troops suffered deficiencies that could affect the prospects of victory. 10 The training of the rank and file was conducted to instill an unquestioned 6 Following analysis is based on A.J. Barker, Japanese Army Handbook, 1939-1945 (London: Ian Allan, 1979); A.D. Coox, Nomonhan: Japan against Russia, 1939 (Stanford: Stanford UP, 1985), and ‘The Effectiveness of the Japanese Military Establishment in the Second World War’, in A.R. Millett and W. Murray (eds), Military Effectiveness, Volume III: the Second World War, (Boston: Allen & Unwin, 1988), pp.1-44; E. Drea, In the Service of the Emperor: essays on the Imperial Japanese Army (Lincoln: Nebraska UP, 1998); H.P. Willmott, Empires in the Balance: Japanese and Allied Pacific strategies to April 1942 (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1982). 7 L.A. Humphreys, The Way of the Heavenly Sword: The Japanese Army in the 1920s (Stanford: Stanford UP, 1995), p.15 8 Ibid., pp.79-83 9 Drea, Service of the Emperor, p.63 10 Coox, ‘Effectiveness of the Japanese Military’, pp.34-38 3 acceptance of orders from higher authority, and traditions demanded an adherence to set methods. Developments following the 1939 border clashes against the Soviets, in the Nomonhan region, highlighted how the IJA’s service culture obstructed innovation. The high command realized that its defeat against the Red Army was due to the poor state of its tactics and technology, but the Japanese army’s ineptitude in operating armor and artillery prevented it from achieving anything similar to Western standards in the employment of mechanized forces. 11 The solution was to augment the infantry by introducing a limited amount of supporting arms, but the IJA continued to overestimate the extent to which its forces could cope with enemies who possessed material superiority. Army commanders also continued to hold a condescending view of western forces, including the US and British.12 However, the IJA’s faults did not significantly affect its performance during the opening stages of the Pacific War. The Japanese defeated opponents who had a clear numerical superiority, and overran Southeast Asia with a mere eleven divisions.13 Japanese troops proved to be a tough enemy, ‘daring in the attack, and stubborn in the defense’.
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